Macedonia’s 2011 Independence Day Interview with Stevo Pendarovski
By Sam VakninAuthor of "Malignant Self-love: Narcissism Revisited"
Macedonia’s 2011 Independence Day Inter
“for coffee”. On all occasions, I found him to be level
-headed, incisively analytical, and atrue public intellectual. At the same time, his views are never trite, or conventional. Healways introduces new, surprising angles into old and apparently worn-out debates. In thissense, he is a stealth iconoclast.Currently, Stevo Pendarovski is an Assistant Professor in International Security, ForeignPolicy and Globalization at the School of Political Science at UACS.In the 1990's he was an Assistant Minister for Public Relations and Head of the Analyticaland Research Department in the Ministry of Interior Affairs of the Republic of Macedonia.In the last decade he has served as National Security and Chief Foreign Policy Advisor to twoPresidents of the Republic of Macedonia. In 2004/2005 was Head of the State ElectionCommission.His teaching and research areas include International Relations, Intelligence and NationalSecurity, Geopolitics, Globalization, US Foreign Policy, EU Foreign and Security Policy,Small States in International Affairs.We conducted this interview amidst the heat wave
–
literal and figurative
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SV: How will recent developments in Kosovo and Serbia affect inter-ethnic relations inMacedonia and the Ohrid Framework Agreement? How fragile is the coalition betweenVMRO and DUI?SP:
In the post-communist Balkans, the regional security dynamic has always been strongerthan the national ones. We have witnessed its strength during most of the 1990s in thetriangle Serbia- Bosnia-Croatia; it is still valid within the triad Kosovo- South Serbia
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Macedonia.In other words: in the short run, the de facto independent north of Kosovo will not present asecurity threat to Macedonia, but if a partition of Kosovo is eventually executed by the
mutual consent of Belgrade and Pristina, even the perfect implementation of the Framework Agreement in Macedonia cannot save the country from troubles.I have no doubts that, as far as the daily political routine goes, the Albanian party in theMacedonian Government - DUI - will remain committed to the local constitutional context,but if strategic challenges arise, than all Albanians in the region will reconsider their status inan integral way. Whenever it deals with ordinary political issues the ruling coalition is goingto be strong, in line with the combined numbers of its MPs in the Parliament, but, when faced
with strategic challenges each of the coalition’s constituents will look exclusively to their
ethnic kin. In the former situation politicians will think about their individual and political
gains, in the latter one, they will always make wider calculations about their peoples’ gains in
the historical perspective.In the period prior to the Ahtisaari Agreement the Macedonian leadership have repeatednumerous times to their foreign interlocutors that a partition of Kosovo should be dangerousfor Macedonia on the same scale as an independent state if it were to treat the regionalborders as in a perpetual flux. Therefore in Skopje we were pleased to see point No. 6 of theContact Group document from October 2005 which forbids the partition of Kosovo or itsunion with anycountry, or part of any country in the region.Despite the propaganda going on in parallel in both capitals my understanding of thenegotiations between Belgrade and Pristina is that the status of Kosovo is not going to be onthe table as well as the status of the Serb-dominated north Kosovo. The prime Serbian goal isto maintain the status quo and keep the problem indefinitely on the list of frozen internationalconflicts.Internally, before the border blockades happened, Serbs have been relatively successful inpersuading their public that the status of Kosovo is still up in the air and that the transfer toThe Hague o
f the remaining war criminals is the last demand of “western civilization” from
the Serbian people before they obtain the status of an EU candidate country.The action of the special forces of Pristina which, by the way, has a long history of close
cooperation with western capitals even on the most benign issues, possessed the “right”
timing: its sole aim was to corner Serbia in the last possible moment before the mechanics of the EU negotiations automatically assume the lead.Today the bar
for Serbia’s EU entry is set far higher than before, but it is still reachable if
smaller adjustments are made by the Belgrade authorities.Anyhow, in the long term, Macedonia may be caught in a very unpleasant encirclement withone internationally semi-recognized neighbor with an internal division along ethnic lines andanother neighbor frozen on the road to the EU, in Turkey-like style. History teaches us thatwhenever the borders are reconsidered it always provokes debates about territorialcompensation. Compared to the Serbian and Albanian overall potentials, Macedonia is by farthe weakest link in the chain in demographic, political, economic, military and strategicterms.
SV: What does Macedonia hope to achieve by joining NATO? Is Macedonia ready forchallenges like asymmetric and low-intensity warfare and terrorism?SP:
The long-
held illusion of Macedonia’s citizens is that NATO membership, by default,
secures the future of the state. Ignorance is immense among ordinary people and politiciansalike, both of whom fail to understand that collective territorial defense has nothing to dowith eventual domestic contradictions and tensions. This was demonstrated in Macedonia in2001 when the so-called internal geopolitics was in place, with Macedonians and Albanianscompeting for the same resources and territory, at least in the initial stages of the conflict.It is not necessary for NATO to teach us to be effective in asymmetric warfare or the fightagainst terrorism since I am not convinced at all that the Alliance in itself is capable of countering these threats. NATO has done a great job in Macedonia in the 1990s andafterwards, by assisting the Macedonian Army to re-structure itself from an organization of conscripts into an army of professionals. NATO is even more needed in the field of securitysocialization, in pushing the regional armies towards building mutual trust and cooperation.The end state of this activity should be to definitely bury the notion still alive in the minds of many people that the former Yugoslavia was a respected and influential member of the
international community because it allegedly possessed the ”forth strongest army” in Europe.
SV: Why did Macedonia's belated drive to join the EU stall? Is the Name Dispute theonly obstacle - or are there other factors and considerations?SP:
Formally, in the 2008 Bucharest Summit (when Macedonia was not invited to joinNATO
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SV) the problem was the name dispute; informally, to some extent, it is the EU’s
enlargement fatigue.
It’s obvious that in the last three years Europeans are more ready than before to leverageregional disputes or somebody’s poor preparedness for delaying the entry of new members.
The latest example has been the extraordinarily difficult negotiation rounds with Croatia,
which have only enhanced the impression that the building up of “fortress Europe” is going
on uninterrupted.
Having said that, I do not have a slightest intention to “pardon” the incumbent Macedonian
politicians, who have sidelined the negotiations with Greece and, instead became engaged in
something which can be vaguely described as a “cultural awakening of the nation”. With thecostly and controversial project “Skopje 2014” and the accompanying populist policies, we
became indistinguishable from the century old Greek nationalism which was barely toleratedby Brussels and Washington only a few years ago.By modifying your question, I will attempt to give an answer regarding the potential of thedispute: the name is still the on
ly obstacle in Macedonia’s road towards the EU, but, waiting
to resolve it for too long will produce many other obstacles. Since the double integrationagenda has been pushed to the margins we now lack the so-called EU conditionality whichargues for the adoption of EU standards in different areas. Thus, it is not a surprise to notethat we were the recipients of depressing descriptions in a few crucial sectors of society in
last year’s EU progress report. All available data indicate that negative trends in
the judiciary,public administration, freedom of the media, and inter-ethnic relations have been amplified inthe meantime.
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Macedonia’s 2011 Independence Day Interview with Stevo Pendarovski
Vaknin: "I have been fortunate to meet Stevo Pendarovski several times, in his official capacities, and “for coffee”. On all occasions, I found him to be level-headed, incisively analytical, and a true public intellectual. At the…
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